Mr. Karl-Heinz Lambertz:

I thank the Chairman. One thing is clear, all things are linked in a very fundamental way, which is the future of Europe.

In terms of the first remark about Mr. Barnier, it is very important that member states continue to centralise negotiations. It is absolutely impossible to start separate negotiations. It was important for the first part of the negotiations and it is even more important for the second part. That is the reason I said in my speech that we are not a parallel negotiation team. We are a fact-finding mission that wants to bring specific aspects of local and regional levels to the attention of Mr. Barnier. We have had two large debates with Michel Barnier. When we prepared our resolutions we developed strong connections with his team. We will have another discussion with him probably in the month of July, in the context of our next plenary session.

The word that I have heard spoken here the most is "peace", which is an important message to come from a discussion in Ireland and Northern Ireland. In 2012, the European Union was awarded the Nobel Prize for Peace. That was a good decision and better than other decisions that I will not discuss.

In terms of the issue we are discussing here, peace is the founding ideal of the European Union. It is the biggest success story in the field of peace around the world. It is clear that the fall of the Iron Curtain, the reunification of Germany and the Good Friday Agreement would never have been realised without the European Union.

In terms of the big challenges for the future, I am convinced that Europe must play a big role in all the areas that need more peace in the world. For such work to be a success, we need a stronger Europe than we have now.

How can Europe be stronger? One of the key solutions is how we handle the issue of borders. Europe is the smallest continent in the world when one peruses a map. Europe is also the continent with the highest density of borders. Open borders are fundamental for Europe but they can only function if external borders are correctly managed. Borders are a crucial issue in Brexit negotiations because it is impossible to imagine that a border between Andalusia and Gibraltar, and certainly between Ireland and Northern Ireland, will be a real external border of the European Union. That is one of the trickiest issues in the Brexit discussion. How can we handle such a complicated matter? I hope the British Government will be flexible and agree with our solutions. Unfortunately, the British Government is in a complicated situation but that is its own responsibility.

Mr. David Cameron had a big vote in terms of doing what he did. The calling of new elections some time ago in Great Britain was not the most intelligent way to do politics. Politics must find solutions and I am sure we will find a solution. I am sure of that because there is no other possible way, except a completely lost situation. I cannot imagine at the moment what the elements of this deal will be. I have some ideas in mind. People have been discussing how the various possibilities can be combined. I would say it will be a Belgian compromise. What do I mean by that? It is where we have incompatible positions. Then we have long negotiations. Finally, we have a very complicated compromise that nobody understands. It is the best way to say that one is not the loser. Then we have the most important aspect - it must work. We have some experiences of this in our country but I am not sure that is the best way to go. It will be very complicated but it is fundamental.

Another problem is the fact that things are happening now at a time when we have big challenges in respect of the future of Europe. The European population is not really happy with Europe. A majority is convinced that we still need Europe but we must have changes. The most important changes that we need can only be done unanimously. If one travels in the different countries in Europe one can understand that it will be difficult. I have just come from a discussion on this in Hungary. We need results and we need progress. The future of Europe is a fundamental issue and the way to approach something is perhaps to go back to the citizens.

That is why two years ago, or perhaps three, we started our Reflecting on Europe process. We will bring an opinion to the table in October but it will done in the coming weeks because our CIVEX commission must adopt it before the summer. We will try to bring some messages. For me, however, the most important message is that Europe is not only Brussels, Strasbourg or Luxembourg. Europe is where people are living in their villages, in cities and in regions. A mayor is as important as a European politician, a member of the European Parliament and even the President of the European Commission. It is only on that level that we can convince people in their heads and in their hearts that Europe has a real added value.

The situation around the Border of Northern Ireland and Ireland was a good example in the past and now, perhaps, it must be a test for this message. I hope we can have some progress. However, we have not only this fundamental discussion about the future as well as the issue of Brexit; we also have the unfriendly issue of the multi-annual financial framework, MFF. When we start to talk about money, all friendships are loosened. It will be a difficult moment to find some good compromises. In the European Committee of the Regions, we agree completely with the Irish position. It is not possible to consider that agriculture or cohesion are only policies that we have up to now. These are policies for the future. They must be preserved and modernised in a correct way.

That is our daily struggle at the moment. We did major work around our cohesion alliance but we have even bigger work to do in the next month with a large number of regulations concerning the MFF implementation. We hope we can have enough power and influence to change things. On that level, we ask parliaments to be active. It is important national parliaments are also active on this issue and that they look at what is actually discussed in the subsidiarity task force. It was created in November 2017 and has to produce a report on 15 July. There are nine members and two of them are here. We are very busy with this issue and it is not easy to find the correct compromise. It is fundamental, however, that Europe concentrates on these big issues with a real European added value, while the focus on details is more at the level of the national, regional and even local authorities. We have so many challenges at the moment that it is perhaps a reason to hope. These challenges are too big to fail.